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Category Archives: Love

Bruce Kerner loved to fish. He didn’t get to fish often. He was a sign painter for various studios and was away working on movies a lot. He and his family vacationed with us many times when I was a kid. Back then, vacation time meant Big Bend Resort on the Colorado River and day trips to Lake Havasu.

We’d get a cove on the lake and set up our day camp with a shade, lawn chairs, and coolers. Bruce always had a bunch of fishing gear that we’d bring ashore.

While the rest of us focused on swimming and water skiing, he focused on fishing. The pursuit. The exploration. Deciding which baits to try. Changing rigs. Trying new lures. Moving down the beach to a new location. Floating out in a rubber raft to cast near the “proper” pile of rocks.

He always had a look of contentment on his face as he stared at that place where the fishing line meets the water. Constant vigilance, looking for any sign of a bite. Maintaining soft hands to feel the slightest movement.

It didn’t matter that the fish usually showed little interest in his bait. For Bruce, fishing was more important than catching. When he did catch a fish, he was rarely prepared to keep it. Somehow, his stringer was always left back at the camp. He knew that as long as we had daylight, he could cast his bait out there another time.

Come to think of it, we fished at night as well. Down on the dock along the river, after dinner. A bunch of us would look across at the lights on the Arizona side and cast out. Our quarry on the river was catfish, and that meant stink-baits and lots of waiting.

Funny thing is we didn’t catch many catfish either. When we did, we’d get a flashlight out, or flick a Bic lighter, to see what we’d caught. The stringer? Usually up at the trailer. We weren’t prepared to keep anything we caught.

Sitting there in the dark, fishing pole in hand, staring up at the stars, a kid can learn a lot talking with a fisherman like Bruce. The meaning of patience. The dignity of discipline. How the journey is more important than the destination. How quiet time is a good time. The way opportunity meets preparation when that fish hits your bait. How stories about nothing can mean everything when they’re gone.

Bruce was taken away too early from this world by a heart attack, many years ago. I find him in my thoughts a lot around July 4th. That was one of the times each year that our families vacationed at the river.

When I think of Bruce, I remember the fishing and the laughter. I don’t remember the fish we caught.

Maybe it’s all the close calls, existential threats, newly-invented liabilities, newly-minted regulations, new competitors, old competitors, angry customers, happy customers, former customers, new customers, potential opportunities, new ideas, new methods, better mouse traps, and everything else that comes our way in business (no matter the size).

Maybe it’s the fight-or-flight instinct that gets honed to a fine edge through years of experience. Knowing when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em…but always allowing room for doubt. Knowing when the silent customer is more important than the loudest one. Knowing that the employee you don’t see is just as important as the one you do see. Knowing we always have a competitor, whether we realize it or not.

Maybe it’s that standard defensive posture that every business assumes at times, even when it knows that only a strong offense will win the day. Understanding that this isn’t a game we get to win every day.

Maybe it’s just fear of failure, or more likely, fear of success.

Whatever it is that stops me from getting the most enjoyment from this business…now is the time to let it go.

Life is way too short to let the small stuff get in the way.

Here’s my promise to myself:

I will go on offense, every day

I will acknowledge my fears, but only if it helps create a stronger offense

I will focus on the next step forward, and let the past remain there

I will create opportunities for those around me

I will love and serve

I will let go

I will enjoy each day as the gift that it is.

I will do these things as a promise to myself, knowing that I’m not the One who is in control.

Be curious. Open your mind. Challenge yourself to listen and learn. Respectfully explore new perspectives. Discover your own inner Icon\Genius\Maverick.

Great advice in any setting. Prerequisites for attending a TEDx event.

Here’s a summary of this year’s talks:

Stella Young—I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much. Stella was born with a disability that limited her growth, and confines her to a wheelchair. Is it difficult being disabled? Yes. Is she special because she’s disabled? She doesn’t think so, and her goal is that you won’t either.

Stella told a story that happened when she was about thirteen. Her parents received a call from a representative of their town council saying they’d like to give Stella an award for her community achievements. That was puzzling to her parents (and her), since she hadn’t really achieved anything for the community. She was more interested in watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dawson’s Creek than actually doing anything for someone else.

The real reason for the award was that she was disabled and could be an inspiration to others. But that’s just it. She says that being disabled shouldn’t be something special, or an inspiration. After all, isn’t the inspiration we feel based upon the silent (and instant) comparison we make to that disabled person’s difficulty…and our relief that it isn’t us? By comparing ourselves to someone we think should have lowered expectations, we give ourselves permission to have our own higher expectations, at their expense.

Stella can’t wait for the day when being disabled isn’t special: the day when we take our inspiration and lessons from the good within people, whether they’re disabled or not.

Dan Pallotta—The way we think about charity is dead wrong. How much should a charity spend on fundraising? How much overhead should they have? Is it better to have a bake sale and raise $375 with no overhead, or spend $350,000 to produce an event that raises $5,000,000? If you’re an MBA graduate, should you go to work at a for-profit company, or a non-profit?

Dan says the way we approach these questions, and the ethical standards we put on charities and non-profits, is shackling them and reducing their ability to grow. We should be focused on what they are raising, how successful they are at providing their services, and not their overhead rate.

He provided a number of examples of the ways we apply different standards to for-profits, compared to non-profits. And yet, for all the advantages that for-profit organizations have in terms of access to capital, access to talent, permission to make mistakes, and their ability to focus on growth; they are not equipped or motivated to provide the type of assistance (economic and otherwise) that’s required in the lowest 10 percent of our society. Philanthropy is the marketplace for love. We need a robust and well-funded non-profit community to meet the very real needs of those less fortunate.

To get there, we need to upend the way we think about non-profits. We need to remove the shackles and give them the room they need to grow and succeed.

Mina Morita. What you value is defined by what you risk. Mina’s mom risked everything to come to America from Japan when she was 20. Mina gave up her corporate job to pursue her love of theater. Through many twists and turns, she is now the Artistic Director of Crowded Fire Theater. She’s fulfilled and happy. Not because her life is perfect. It’s fairly messy.

She gets to tell stories and create unique moments that can only happen in theater. Theater fulfills dreams. It’s a place where failure and judgment are in the flesh…every night. She has missed a lot of life’s joys, sacrificed special moments with family and friends. But, she’s happy because her life is what she wants it to be. What you value is defined by what you risk.

Brian Vellmure. Brian is a management consultant, but his talk wasn’t about that. It was about how to prepare our next generation for the challenges that lie ahead. What does he recommend? Team sports and adventure travel.

Team sports show us how to work with others, how to rise to a new challenge, how to go beyond what’s expected. Most importantly, team sports show us how to respond and bounce back from failure…and the fear of failure.

Adventure travel makes us all kindergarteners again. We don’t know anything. We don’t know the language, the customs, the food, or the geography. Outcomes are uncertain. It’s perfect practice for dealing with the challenges that our future will bring.

Why do some people succeed while others fail? Brian says successful people have three things above all else. Curiosity. Grit. Character.

Ryan Gattis. Ryan is an author, but more than that, he is an explorer of life. In 2009, his life had bottomed. He boiled it down to a series of numbers and stats, and none painted a good picture.

As a storyteller, Ryan told us that every good story has five elements:

Hooks

The Unexpected

Cause & Effect

How did it feel?

Concrete specific detail.

All of these elements are nothing if the story (and the author) lacks authenticity. Authenticity is the invisible power that makes a story matter.

Ryan weaved three stories together that contained all of the elements. We heard about the depths of his despair in 2009 and the course he charted to climb out, followed by an intense meeting with a Los Angeles area gang leader, asking permission to do research for his next book, All Involved: A Novel of the 1992 L.A. Riots. The third story, and also an unexpected element within the first two, was something that happened when he was seventeen. He wound up on the receiving end of a punch from a football player named Lump. The punch destroyed and relocated all of the cartilage in his nose to an area on his cheek, without breaking a bone. Two reconstructive surgeries later, he was fluent in pain.

It was that pain that gave his stories their authenticity, along with all the other elements. He discovered that once he opened up to his pain, his prose opened up as well.

Doug Woo. Doug is the president of the Smart Display Division at FUHU. FUHU focuses on providing digital solutions for families and kids. They have a line of tablets, aimed at the unique needs of families. Their Big Tab displays are as big as seventy inches. They resemble large flat screen TV’s, but they act like tablets.

Their innovation was to create a whole new category, based on something that everyone thought they already knew. Tablets. Innovation is practical change, driven by desperation or inspiration. FUHU went “big,” and focused on how to connect the family with their technology. Their cause was bigger than just the technology. Togetherness, collaboration, sharing. These were their motivation, and the Big Tab displays are the result.

These tablets don’t isolate family members. Instead, the entire family shares in the immersive experiences that only the Big Tab can provide.

Dotsie Bausch. In the first minute of Dotsie’s talk, we learned that she was a fashion model, a cocaine addict, bulimic, and attempted suicide twice. This was all before she entered three years of therapy. As she made progress, her therapist recommended she take on a new activity, and she chose cycling on a whim.

By 2012, she had become an Olympian track cyclist. She won a silver medal in the team pursuit event. She says that she has a voracious appetite for winning.

But, that wasn’t the subject of her talk.

Her talk focused on the benefits of a plant-based diet. It all started when she watched a documentary about factory farms, and witnessed the cruelty that animals face on their way to slaughter. She considers it an act of Olympic-level compassion to eat a plant-based diet.

She says that a person who eats only a plant-based diet is consuming 200,000 less gallons of water per year than someone who eats a meat-based diet. Athletes who eat plant-based diets recover 50% faster than their meat-based counterparts.

She asked each of us to go meatless for one day to start down the path toward a plant-based diet.

Todd Irving. Everyone is someone’s child. Todd says this should be the dominant thought in education at all levels. Parents send their most precious possession to school, and they should be treated that way. Todd is the teacher, now principal, that we hope all of our kids get. What makes the most difference to a kid? Taking time to make a connection with them. Getting to know them, their dreams, and their fears…one-on-one. Every child needs to have hope, and that’s the job of every educator, and each of us in the community.

Lesley Fightmaster. Yes, that’s her real name. Lesley is a yoga instructor. She led us in a short, guided meditation. We started by focusing on our breathing and our posture. With our eyes closed, breathing a little more deeply, she guided us through a series of peaceful thoughts that we directed out to the world and then back within ourselves.

Meditation helps us focus on the present moment. This moment is great. Be there. Namaste.

Dr. Anthony Chang. Dr. Chang started his talk with some sobering statistics about the relative happiness of physicians in the US. Nine out of ten physicians wouldn’t recommend their profession to others. Only 6% are happy with their careers. We are creating a perfect storm for reducing physician morale. They are under pressure to see high volumes of patients in a short amount of time. They are inundated with data gathering, data entry, and billing challenges.

Dr. Chang gets his inspiration from his patients. He told us about three of his patients, Hanna, Elsie, and Shirley. Hanna helped him renew his idealism for his profession. Elsie showed him how important it is to take all the data we have and somehow turn it into wisdom for patients…intelligence in medicine. Shirley reminded him about the importance of innovation in medicine.

Dr. Chang wants to integrate artificial intelligence into the practice of medicine. When we were learning to fly, we watched birds. Our first attempts tried to mimic their method, and didn’t work. Only by learning the underlying characteristics of flight, were we able to solve the riddle of flight in our own unique way.

It’s the same with artificial intelligence. Rather than attempting to mimic the way our brains function, the best approach is to extract the lessons we can learn and create our own unique methodology for bringing intelligence to various fields, like medicine.

Dr. Brenda Wiederhold. Dr. Wiederhold is a clinical psychologist and entrepreneur. She uses virtual reality to create transformative therapies for her patients. Therapies that free her patients from the bonds of fear and anxiety, and help them regain control.

Virtual reality is an excellent tool for transporting a patient into another reality. A reality that scares them, paralyzes them, or holds them hostage. Once the patient enters this reality, Dr. Wiederhold can work with them in this safe environment, showing them how to control their emotions, and ultimately their subconscious mind. This frees the patient to use what they’ve learned in the virtual reality environment, in the real world.

Phu Hoang. Build your dreams over time. Phu is the co-founder and CEO of Virtium Technology. He says there are two types of entrepreneurs. One is the “reckless abandon” type that makes a breakthrough and dives into it without really knowing which way he’s going. We’ve heard of many of them, yet there are only a few of them.

Then, there’s the rest of us.

Phu’s advice is to always have a dream, but also a belief in ourselves. He always believed that if he put time into learning about something, he could master it. By continuously improving, he could become the best. Choose a niche in something that is already growing rapidly. Look where the big guys aren’t looking and take that bite size niche. Become number one in that niche and build from there.

It’s okay to build someone else’s dream while you’re building your own. When you’re ready, make the leap and work full-time on your own dream.

Rob Seitelman. Rob is the speaker coach for Chapman’s TEDx. His talk was a letter to his daughters on the power of failure. Everything worthwhile has to cost something. Sometimes that cost is failure. Create a fall-through plan, not a fall-back plan. Sometimes you can do everything right and it still doesn’t work. The reality is that life is all about family, friends, and most importantly, love.

Never let someone else dictate your happiness. There is such a thing as best, but it’s only what’s best for YOU that matters. What’s best for someone else isn’t necessarily best for you. Think about the “why” of things. The most important “why” is: for the benefit of those who will come after us.

Ahmed Younis. Ahmed is an Assistant Professor at Chapman University. He focuses on the architecture of social change, youth employment in the Arab World, global Muslim public opinion and Islamic reform for social change. He started his talk by saying that he’s been working on terrorism for the past fifteen years. But, he hit a wall about a year ago.

He began to lose faith. A vessel can only pour what is within it, and he feared that his vessel was empty. It’s his job to articulate hope, and yet he was out of hope. He went on a search for hope and found it in a surprising place. He found hope in graphic novels and comic books. His favorite comic books? Pride, Cairo, Captain America, Black Panther, and Ms. Marvel.

Each tells a story where hope triumphs amidst tragedy and conflict. Each is a story of heroes rising up from nothing to take on a world of ugliness and darkness.

How we engage the ugliness determines our hearts, and gives us hope.

Mandy Len Catron. Mandy published an article in the New York Times in January of this year, titled, To Fall In Love with Anyone, Do This. It highlights a study done more than twenty years ago by Dr. Arthur Aron. It’s an experiment built around the intimacy that comes from sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self disclosure.

Here’s the premise (from the article): A heterosexual man and woman enter the lab through separate doors. They sit face to face and answer a series of increasingly personal questions. Then they stare silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes. The most tantalizing detail: Six months later, two participants were married. They invited the entire lab to the ceremony.

Intrigued, Mandy tried this experiment with an acquaintance. After they had asked each other the 36 questions, they stepped outside the bar where they were for the evening, and onto a bridge. They then stared silently into each other’s eyes for four minutes.

Did they fall in love? Yes, but that’s not the whole story.Her story received over 8 million views. Suddenly, she was an international news story. Unfortunately, so was her new relationship. The most asked question she receives is, “Are you two still together?”

She doesn’t think that’s the question we should be asking.

When you admit to loving someone, you admit to having a lot to lose. What she wants from love, and probably what most people want, is a guarantee that this love will last forever. That’s why everyone asks if they’re still together.

Falling in love and staying in love are two different things. Love is terrifying, and there aren’t any guarantees. That’s part of the deal.

Are they still together? Yes.

If there was one overarching theme from all the talks, it is that hope is precious. Without it, life becomes ugly. With it, everything else becomes possible.

The assignment: Describe the most dramatic moment in your life. Easy. But, there were two rules:

1) You have 15 minutes.

2) Only use one-syllable words.

That’s a little tougher.

Here was my entry:

“The rate is gone!”

“Turn her!”

“Code blue!” yelled the nurse.

All of the white coats on the floor were there fast. Jan’s eyes showed her fear. I was no help. I froze and watched in awe.

One nurse pushed some drug in her arm. One nurse held her hand. Two docs barked new plans and the group worked their plan.

“Crash cart!” yelled one doc.

“We must go in. The child may be lost!”

This was our first child. We had been there for a day and a half, and now this. What did it all mean? Would our child make it out to see the world?

They ran down the hall on her bed with wheels. There I stood. The clock read five. The mess showed what was left from my child’s fight for life. Where did they go? I did not know so I stood there in the dark for at least three ticks of the clock.

“Sir, your wife is fine,” the nurse said. She had found me and showed me to the room. “Your child is fine. Come in and see. Would you like to hold her?”

Our girl was born! From out of the dark, the world turned bright for us all that day.

***

Twenty-five years later, yet it seems like only a few minutes have passed. Julianne made her dramatic entrance, and our lives have never been the same.

“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” – Confucius (Kung Fu Tzu)

There’s a place in Baja, on the Sea of Cortez side, about 100 miles south of San Felipe called Gonzaga Bay. You can drive there pretty easily (by Baja standards) nowadays. But, 30 years ago, it was quite an adventure to get there. Your reward for all that off road adventure (other than the journey itself)? An off-the-grid community of small “houses” on a beautiful bay with whatever supplies you were able to bring with you.

Beyond the stark beauty of the bay, the warm water, fresh ocean breezes, and perfect cocktail conditions, the thing I remember most was the darkness. The stars were so close you could almost touch them. On a moonless night, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

But, light one candle and the scene changed. The light from that one candle would penetrate the darkness. The terrain glowed in the light. Bushes and rocks cast shadows in the night. The darkness was no match for the light from just one candle.

Darkness is all around us. That darkness may even come from within. We can choose to let the darkness consume us and everything we do.

Airplanes generally don’t crash due to one failure, or unexpected event. They rarely crash when a second failure happens. It’s usually the third unexpected event that brings it down. This tragic truism in real-life plane travel can be applied to life. Consider your own “plane crashes.” Were they preceded by just one failure, or unexpected event? It was probably the second and third failure that actually brought things down. We learn more from failures than successes. Even better are the lessons that come when we honestly and thoroughly investigate our own plane crashes, and the series of failures that caused them.

Speaking of success. Success is all about definition. The only definition that matters is the one you create for yourself. Success, by any definition, won’t bring truly transcendent happiness.

Transcendent happiness comes from within. Its foundation is a belief in something greater than yourself. Something that you can’t touch, taste, see, smell, or hear.

Speaking of something greater than yourself. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. It transcends all time and space. Love can’t be stopped by death. Being loved, and loving others, fills your soul. Love is free, and yet it has infinite value.

Teaching your son to cook blueberry muffins for his dad is one of the best gifts a mom can give to her son (and husband). Texting a photo of that cooking lesson to his grandpa is a great way to demonstrate truth number four.

Your mommy takes your toy away before you’re finished with it. Injustice! How do you deal with it? Maybe you cry, or throw a hissy fit. Chances are, since your attention span at 18 months is pretty short, you’ll forget about the injustice and get another toy.

Life isn’t fair, and neither are some people. Things go wrong. Plans get up-ended. Promises aren’t always kept. A friend or family member may offend us. Someone we love may destroy themselves with addiction. We might be the victim of a heinous crime.

Live long enough, and the injustices (both real and imaginary) will pile up. What to do? Crying may be appropriate. And there’s nothing like the emotional release of a good hissy fit every now and then. But, after that, then what?

The easy thing to do is turn each injustice into a grudge. That way, you can stack the latest grudge on top of the others you’re carrying. If your grudges become disorganized, you can spend some quality time dwelling on them and get them reorganized. If they get too heavy, enlisting the help of others to carry some of your grudges is always helpful.

The burden of a grudge is carried by the victim. The perpetrator, whether real or not, carries no such burden. The perpetrator may carry regret, but they feel none of the weight of your grudge.

In our quest to never forget the lessons of an injustice, we wrap these lessons inside the grudge. It’s a package deal.

For this reason, letting go, forgiving, can seem impossible. Forgiveness runs counter to our natural instincts. But forgiveness is about much more than survival. It’s about finding a way to thrive with a clear focus on the things in life that really matter.

Letting go of a grudge doesn’t mean ignoring the lesson. It means freeing yourself from the weight that only you are carrying.

When someone we love dies, we often hear about the grieving process. We hear that we should take time to grieve. It’s something we can’t skip.

Grieving is unavoidable, no matter how busy or tough we think we are.

I remember when my Grandma Anne died (over twenty years ago). My cousin, Devin, told me about DAWA, the four stages of the grieving process that he’d learned as a policeman:

Denial—we deny that the person has died, or that this is really happening. We may also deny that it’s impacting us emotionally, or deny that we even understand the mix of emotions that are welling-up inside of us.

Anger—we realize this is real. We wonder what we could have done differently. We wonder how something like this could have happened. We may question the justice in the universe, or how God could allow this. Bargaining phrases like, “if only…” come into our mind.

Withdrawal—sometimes the only way to cope with the reality of our loss, and the emotions we can’t control, is to withdraw. This may be within ourselves, or to some place where we can be alone. Denial is giving way to reality. Anger is turning to sadness. We look within ourselves for the strength to overcome our sadness.

Acceptance—we begin to get our head wrapped around what is happening. We start to make peace with this new reality. Acceptance doesn’t mean we’re “over it,” or that there isn’t an irreparable rip in the fabric of our soul. It means we start to understand how to go forward with our life.

It’s easy to list these stages and assume grief is a simple process with a beginning, middle, and end. It doesn’t work that way. Some people never get through all the stages, or, they may cycle through one or more of the stages numerous times. It’s a process without a true endpoint…only the hope of eventual acceptance.

The grieving process applies to more than our loved ones passing away. It can apply to losing just about anything else we love (whether we realize it or not).

Maybe it’s a friend who we don’t get to see anymore, a hobby we can no longer participate in, moving into a new house (and leaving the old one behind), graduating from college and saying goodbye to our friends, losing that job we thought we’d have for many years to come.

It doesn’t matter if we’re the ones driving the change in our life, or if the change is thrust upon us without warning. It doesn’t matter if our loss is a stepping stone that leads us to something even greater (which is often the case).